I think the week’s rioting helped to break down his health. He was always nervous at a first production and the unusual excitement attending this one upset him. He took a chill and was kept to his bed for a while. Yet he got away to wild places while he could. He wrote to me from the Kerry coast: “My journey went off all right, and though I had a terribly wet night in Tralee, I was able to ride on here next day. When I came up to the house, I found to my horror a large green tent pitched in the haggard and thought I had run my head into a Gaelic League settlement at last. However, it turned out to be only a band of sappers, who have since moved on.” And again: “The day after to-morrow I move on, bag and baggage, to the Great Blasket Island. It is probably even more primitive than Aran, and I am wild with joy at the prospect. I will tell you of my new abode. I am to go out in a curragh on Sunday, when the people are going back from Mass on the mainland, and I am to lodge with the King!”
It was only in the country places he was shy of the Gaelic League. In August, 1906, he says: “I went to the Oireactas on Thursday to see their plays. Their propagandist play, done by the Ballaghadereen company, was clever, with some excellent dialogue. The peasants who acted it were quite admirable. I felt really enthusiastic about the whole show, although the definitely propagandist fragments were, of course, very crude. The play was called, I think, an T-Atruighe mor (The big change). I think I have spelled it wrong. It would probably read badly.”
The last year was still a struggle against failing strength: “April, ’08. I have been waiting from day to day to write, so that I might say something definite about my ‘tin-tacks’ (an allusion to the old man in Workhouse Ward who had pains like tin-tacks in his inside) and possible plans. I was with the doctor again to-day, and he thinks I may have to go into hospital again and perhaps have an operation, but things are uncertain for a day or two.... I fear there is little possibility of my being able to go to the shows this week, so I do not know if you ought to come up, if you can without inconvenience. I am rather afraid of slovenly shows if there are poor houses and no one there to supervise. It is very trying having to drop my rehearsals of Well of the Saints. In fact, this unlooked for complication is a terrible upset everyway—I have so much to do.”
“August 28, ’08. I have just been with Sir C. Ball. He seems to think I am going on very well, and says I may ride and bicycle and do what I like! All the same I am not good for much yet. I get tired out very easily. I am half inclined to go to the British Association matinée on Friday. I would like to hear Yeats’ speech, and I don’t think it would do me any harm. In any case, I will go in and see you when you are up. I think of going away to Germany or somewhere before very long. I am not quite well enough for the West of Ireland in this broken weather, and I think the complete change would do me most good. I have old friends on the Rhine I could stay with, if I decide to go there. I hear great accounts of the Abbey this week. It almost looks as if Dublin was beginning to know we are there. I have been fiddling with my Deirdre a little. I think I’ll have to cut it down to two longish acts. The middle act in Scotland is impossible.... They have been playing The Well of the Saints in Munich. I have just got £3:10, royalties. It was a one-act version I have just heard this minute, compressed from my text!”
“January 3, ’09. I have done a great deal to Deirdre since I saw you, chiefly in the way of strengthening motives and recasting the general scenario; but there is still a good deal to be done with the dialogue and some scenes in the first act must be rewritten to make them fit in with the new parts I have added. I only work a little every day, and I suffer more than I like with indigestion and general uneasiness inside.... The doctors are vague and don’t say much that is definite....
“They are working at the Miser now and are all very pleased with it and with themselves, as I hear. I have not been in to see a rehearsal yet, as I keep out in the country as much as I can.”
But his strength did not last long enough to enable him to finish Deirdre of the Sorrows, his last play. After he was gone, we did our best to bring the versions together, and we produced it early in the next year, but it needed the writer’s hand. I did my best for it, working at its production through snowy days and into winter nights until rheumatism seized me with a grip I have never shaken off. I wrote to Mr. Yeats: “I still hope we can start with Deirdre. I will be in Dublin for rehearsals in Christmas week, though I still hope to get to Paris for Christmas with Robert, but it may not be worth while. I will spend all January at the Theatre, but I must be back on the first of February to do some planting that cannot be put off.” And again: “I am more hopeful of Deirdre now. I have got Conchubar and Fergus off at the last in Deirdre’s long speech and that makes an immense improvement. She looks lonely and pathetic with the other two women crouching and rocking themselves on the floor.”
For we have done our best for Synge’s work since we lost him, as we did while he was with us here.
He had written a poem which was in the Press at the time of his death:
“With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen